Knight Ridder February 2, 2003
Budget cuts, mechanical problems have plagued NASA for years
By Martin Merzer and Lisa Arthur
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. _ Earlier this month, NASA flexed renewed confidence in its shuttle program by announcing it finally would fulfill the mission of teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Challenger explosion 17 years ago. Her backup for that mission would travel to the International Space Station in November.
But NASA's confidence has not been shared by outsiders who study the space program. Safety panels and government auditors issued critical reports. Outside consultants complained to Congress about job cuts and other problems. In-house critics resigned in protest.
NASA pressed ahead.
Saturday, another shuttle and seven astronauts were lost. "They are making the program more risky," senior NASA manager Jose Garcia said in a story published five years ago by The Miami Herald. He called cuts in safety-related jobs "the biggest threat to the safety of the shuttle and its crew since the Challenger disaster."
Congressional critics, five special advisory panels and the General Accounting Office have warned that layoffs, hiring freezes and other changes within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could place undue pressure on technicians and managers throughout the agency.
Reacting to budget cuts, NASA has cleaved its workforce from 25,000 to 18,500 in the past seven years. Nearly 600 of those employees were overseeing contractors on the shuttle program.
"The reality is that the shuttle will blow up sooner or later," John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va., space policy group, told The Miami Herald. "But the direction in which they are going will make it sooner rather than later."
NASA recently reversed course, conceding it had cut too deeply, promising to hire more engineers. But outside experts said the learning curve would be steep, and the program could be in danger for some time.
"Throughout the Office of Space Flight, which includes the shuttle program, there are more than twice as many workers over 60 years old than under 30 years old," the GAO said in a report issued a year ago.
"This jeopardizes the program's ability to hand off leadership roles to the next generation and achieve a higher flight rate to support assembly of the International Space Station."
Throughout its nearly 22-year history, the shuttle program has been plagued by mechanical problems, some of them potentially disastrous. Engines, fuel lines, electrical connections, crucial seals _ all were found to contain faults. As did the paperwork trail of safety inspections.
One of many examples: Three years ago, shuttle Columbia drifted back to Earth 12 days before schedule because of a malfunctioning fuel cell.
There were more.
Faulty computers, malfunctioning engines, broken parts and a paperwork confusion. All have contributed to launch delays and concerns about the astronauts' safety:
_In August 1994, astronauts endured a frightening, last-chance launch abort of Endeavour. That blastoff was scrubbed with the countdown clock at zero and all three main engines ignited.
Although they shrugged it off at the time, astronauts aboard that shuttle later conceded it was a terrifying experience that had them preparing to abandon ship.
"It was a moment of disbelief, and time goes real slowly," said Steve Smith, a member of that crew. "It's hard to tell what's occurring. We took our seat belts off and got our oxygen set and got our gear off in case we had to egress in a hurry."
The failure was blamed on an overheated pump in one of the engines. The part, extremely powerful and sensitive, and crucial to the safe launch of a shuttle, has been redesigned.
_Another launch attempt was stopped with 11 seconds remaining, and two others were halted with the engines already ignited and the clock frozen at T minus 3 seconds.
_In 1994, the annual Perseid meteor shower forced another delay. The space agency was concerned that meteors could damage the shuttle.
Although that was out of the agency's control, NASA still looked bad. It was not aware its launch schedule conflicted with the meteor shower until told so by a reporter.
_A new embarrassment arose in July 1995. The launch of Discovery was postponed because two pesky woodpeckers drilled 195 holes in the insulation of that craft's fuel tank.
_Leaks of explosive hydrogen fuel on Atlantis and Columbia grounded the entire fleet for much of 1990.
_Cracked temperature sensors were discovered in 1991 in all three shuttles then in the fleet. Engineers said portions of the sensors could have broken free and flowed into the main engine, igniting an in-flight explosion.
The defective parts were replaced with new ones _ or in some cases metal plugs _ and NASA said the problem was solved.
_Preparing for other flights, technicians found problems in a fuel reservoir, cracked door hinges, three faulty steering jets, flawed oxidizer pumps and a malfunctioning engine sensor.
All of the fleet's problems were repaired _ sometimes using parts cannibalized from other shuttles _ or dismissed as posing no danger.
It was not known if problems similar to those contributed to Saturday's accident.
Beset by trouble, NASA launched only five shuttle missions in 1989, six in 1990, six in 1991, eight in 1992, seven annually from 1993 to 1996, eight in 1997, five in 1998, only three in 1999, five in 2000, six in 2001 and five last year.
When the program first was proposed, NASA said it was capable of launching 60 shuttles a year. But the program always seemed on the edge of disaster.
"I'm not sure the manned space program can survive another accident," said Pike, the scientist who criticized NASA's cutbacks in the safety program. "NASA seemed to have forgotten that."
The Congressional Budget Office recently recommended NASA permanently ground the shuttle fleet and concentrate on unmanned flight until a new vehicle is designed. Instead, confronted by limited funds, agency administrators sought to streamline the shuttle program and turned it over to a private contractor, the United Space Alliance.
The transfer began four years ago, though it has aroused protest from many within the agency and from some outside monitors.
"The shuttle is a complex R&D research and development vehicle," Garcia, the disaffected NASA manager, wrote in an open letter to then-President Clinton. "You can't privatize its processing like you would the running of a cafeteria ...
"If these drastic changes are implemented, the perpetrators should not only be held accountable for their action, they should be held criminally liable for the consequences," Garcia wrote.
Many outsiders and some former NASA officials also criticized the moves and warned of looming disaster.
NASA administrators said the employee purges and other changes would reduce unnecessary redundancy and conserve hard-to-get funds. They said constant budget pressure from Congress and the White House complicated their lives but did not diminish their commitment to safety.
"We did not in any way compromise the shuttle over the years," said former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. "Each and every year, we monitored a whole variety of metrics to make sure we operate safely."
Nevertheless, more than a dozen high-ranking NASA executives resigned, many in protest.
Among them: the director of the Kennedy Space Center, the former associate administrator for human space flight, two consecutive directors of space shuttle operations and the safety chief of the astronaut corps.
Bryan O'Conner, one of the space shuttle directors and a former astronaut, told the Los Angeles Times that he was concerned that recent changes blunted reforms imposed after the Challenger disaster.
"It's a safety-related issue," he said. "We ran it this way for 10 years without a mishap, and I didn't see any reason why we should go back to the way we operated in the pre-Challenger days."
Few others spoke publicly, but virtually all were said to have grown concerned about safety.
"An awful lot of senior people have been bailing out," said Pike. "The rumors are that they concluded the situation is intolerable, and they didn't want to be responsible for the consequences."
The explosion of shuttle Challenger on a frigid morning was blamed on a faulty "O-ring" linking segments of one of the craft's twin booster rockets. Investigators said the insulating ring, apparently made rigid from cold weather, cracked and allowed fiery rocket exhausts to leak, igniting the shuttle's massive external fuel tank.
The tragedy resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program.
During that time, technicians performed hundreds of modifications on the remaining fleet.
Finally, American manned space flight resumed Sept. 29, 1988, with the safe launch of Discovery and five astronauts. But that was not the end of the trouble.
A few years ago, shuttle missions received more than usual notice because of the reappearance of O-ring problems.
Engineers said tiny "blow holes" in rubbery insulation next to the O-rings permitted hot gases to singe the rings.
They said the problem, caused by a new manufacturing process, had been corrected. They cleared the shuttles for blastoff.
"Unfortunately, some recent ideas for achieving lower cost space shuttle operations could result in a reduction of NASA and contractor work forces," the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a government oversight group, warned in March 2002. "For example, significant cost savings from reducing from six to four flights per year will only come from staff reductions, which could exacerbate critical skills problems and disrupt the work force."
Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., said recently that he feared that layoffs "could well cut into the very muscle, if not the bone" of NASA's post-Challenger safety program.
Said Weldon: "It's a disgrace."
Copyright © 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
